Wednesday, 16 November 2016

Books to Look Forward to From No Exit Press, Oldcastle Books and Pocket Essentials

January 2017

1947
and Gregor Reinhardt has been hired back onto Berlin's civilian police force.
The city is divided among the victorious allied powers, tensions are growing,
and the police are riven by internal rivalries as factions within it jockey for
power and influence with Berlin's new masters.When a man is found slain in a broken-down tenement, Reinhardt embarks
on a gruesome investigation. It seems a serial killer is on the loose, and
matters only escalate when it's discovered that one of the victims was the
brother of a Nazi scientist.Reinhardt's
search for the truth takes him across the divided city and soon embroils him in
a plot involving the Western Allies and the Soviets. And as he comes under the
scrutiny of a group of Germans who want to continue the war – and faces an
unwanted reminder from his own past – Reinhardt realizes that this
investigation could cost him everything as he pursues a killer who believes
that all wrongs must be avenged... The
Ashes of Berlin is by Luke McCallin.

March 2017

Boundary is by Andrée A Michaud. It’s the
Summer of 1967, The sun shines brightly over

Boundary Pond, a lake on the
US-Canadian border. Holiday makers enjoy the summer, happy and carefree. Zaza
Mulligan and Sissy Morgan play in the hot sand. Children run along the beach as
the hours tick away to the sound of the radio blaring out the latest hits and
the smell of barbecues. Life seems idyllic.But then Zaza disappears, and the skies begin to cloud over...

Slow Burn is by Ace Atkins. The fire at
a boarded-up Catholic church raged hot and fast, lighting up Boston's South End
and killing three fire-fighters who were trapped in the inferno. A year later,
as the city prepares to honour their sacrifice, there are still no answers
about how the deadly fire started. Most at the department believe it was just a
simple accident: faulty wiring in a century-old building. But Boston fire-fighter
Jack McGee, who lost his best friend in the blaze, suspects arson. McGee
is convinced department investigators aren't sufficiently connected to the
city's lowlifes to get a handle on who's behind the blaze - so he takes the
case to Spenser. Spenser quickly learns not only that McGee might be right but
that the fire might be linked to a rash of new arsons spreading through the
city. Spenser follows the trail of fires to Boston's underworld, bringing
him; his trusted ally, Hawk; and his apprentice, Sixkill, toe-to-toe with a
dangerous new enemy who doesn't play by the city's old rules. Spenser has to
find the firebug before he kills again - and stay alive himself.

April 2017

Night Market is by Daniel Pembrey. When
Henk van der Pol is asked by the Justice Minister to infiltrate a team
investigating an online child exploitation network, he can hardly say no – he’s
at the mercy of prominent government figures in The Hague. But he soon
realises the case is far more complex than he was led to believe…
Sometimes, to catch the bad guys, you have to think like one. . ..

Former
CIA Agent George Mueller arrives in Havana in August 1958—the last months
before

the fall of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista—to look into the activities
of Toby Graham, a CIA officer suspected of harboring sympathies for the rebel
forces fighting the unpopular Batista regime. Mueller knew Graham as an
undergraduate and later they were colleagues in Berlin fighting the Soviet
NKVD. Under the guise of their long acquaintance Mueller is recruited to vet
rumors that Graham is putting weapons, covertly provided by the CIA to Batista,
into the hands of Castro’s forces. Public exposure of the CIA weapons mission, and
the activity of one rogue agent, threaten to embarrass the agency.Mueller uncovers a world of deceit as the
FBI, CIA, and State Department compete to influence the outcome of the
revolution in the face of the brutal dictatorship’s imminent collapse. Graham,
meanwhile, is troubled by the hypocrisy of a bankrupt US foreign policy, and
has fallen in love with a married American woman, Liz Malone.The
Good Assassin is by Paul Vidich.

American Noir is Barry Forshaw who is
acknowledged as a leading expert on crime fiction and films from Britain and
the European countries, but a further area of expertise is American crime
fiction, film and TV, as demonstrated in such books as The Rough Guide to
Crime Fiction and Detective. After the success of earlier
entries in his ‘Noir’ series -- Nordic
Noir, Brit Noir and Euro Noir -- he now tackles the
largest and, some might argue, most impressive body of crime fiction from a
single country, the United States, to produce the perfect reader's guide to
modern American crime fiction. The word ‘Noir’ is used in its loosest sense:
every major living American writer is considered (including the giants Harlan
Coben, Patricia Cornwell, James Lee Burke, James Ellroy and Sara Paretsky, as
well as non-crime writers such as Stephen King who stray into the genre), often
through a concentration on one or two key books.Many exciting new talents are highlighted,
and Barry Forshaw’s knowledge of – and personal acquaintance with – many of the
writers grants valuable insights into this massively popular field. But the
crime genre is as much about films and TV as it is about books, and American
Noir is a celebration of the former as well as the latter. US television
crime drama in particular is enjoying a new golden age, and all of the
important current series are covered here, as well as key important recent
films.

May 2017

A hand gripped her upper arm so suddenly it
made her yelp. Biting her lower lip, she spun

round, lashing out in terror. As
she yanked her arm out of his grasp, her elbow hit the side of his chest.
Struggling to cling on to her, he lost his footing. She staggered back and
reached out, leaning one hand on the cold wall of the tunnel. Before she had
recovered her balance he fell, arms flailing, eyes glaring wildly as he
disappeared over the edge of the platform onto the rails below. . .Two murder victims and a suspect whose alibi
appears open to doubt... Geraldine Steel is plunged into a double murder
investigation which threatens not only her career, but her life.When her previously unknown twin Helena
turns up, her problems threaten to make Geraldine's life turn toxic
in more ways than one.Deadly Alibi is by Leigh Russell

June 2017

Calling Down the Storm by Peter
Murphy is the story of two separate but strangely parallel lives: the life of a
defendant on trial for murder, and the life of the judge who presides over his
trial. April 1971. When DI
Webb and DS Raymond arrive at Harpur’s Mews in Bloomsbury in response to a 999
call, a horrific scene awaits them. Susan Lang is lying on the ground, bleeding
to death. Her husband Henry is sitting nearby, holding a large, blood-stained
knife. In shock, Henry claims to have no memory of the events that led to his
wife’s death leaving his barrister, Ben Schroeder, little to defend a potential
charge of murder.Unknown to his strict
Baptist wife Deborah who lives in the family home in Guildford, Mr Justice
Conrad Rainer has a secret life in his London flat, a life as a high-stakes
gambler. In his desperation for money to fund his gaming, he has already raided
his own and Deborah’s resources, and now he has crossed another line – one from
which there is no return. To his horror, as the trial of Henry Lang starts,
Conrad discovers a sinister connection between the trial and his gambling
debts, a connection that could cause his world to unravel. And then, there’s
the other terrible secret he is hiding in his flat. In a rare case in which the
judge is in greater peril than the defendant on trial in his court, both Henry
and Conrad have called down the storm on to their heads. Their lives are on the
line, and time is running out.